re: Candy Crowley Admits Romney was Right on Libya

quote:RTR America Cummings and his fellow liberal liars are referring specifically to the final fiscal year 2012 omnibus appropriations package

I've taken great pains to be non-partisan on this, but if you want to start by implying that everyone who disagrees with you on substance is a "liberal liar," fine. I'll play along.

First, you need to understand what an Omnibus Appropriations Bill is, and how the party controlling congress has near total control of its content.

Every year, Congress must pass bills that appropriate money for all discretionary government spending. Generally, one bill is passed for each sub-committee of Appropriations, one bill for Defense, one for Homeland Security, etc.

However, when Congress can't produce separate bills before the beginning of the fiscal year on October 1, it will roll all the separate appropriations bills into one omnibus spending bill. These bills can easily reach 2,000 pages.

So, of course many democrats voted for it. It was over 2,000 pages long and contained spending on every possible government activity, not just embassy security. However, since Republicans controlled congress and all the sub-committee chairs, they must claim ultimate responsibility for what's in the bill. That's just how congress works. You want control of the House? You take the credit and the blame. Big boy rules.

Romney knew this. It's why he didn't raise the issue in the debate. Again, I wish he had.

re: Candy Crowley Admits Romney was Right on Libya(Posted by RTR America on 10/17/12 at 11:44 am to Jacuzzitub)

quote:I've taken great pains to be non-partisan on this, but if you want to start by implying that everyone who disagrees with you on substance is a "liberal liar," fine. I'll play along.

Just qouted the article wasn't directed at you

This is the main point to make

quote:"It has been suggested that budget cuts are responsible for a lack of security in Benghazi, and I’d like to ask Miss Lamb,” said Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R., Calif.). “You made this decision personally. Was there any budget consideration and lack of budget which lead you not to increase the number of people in the security force there?” “No, sir,” said Lamb.

Just as a genuine tip to help you in the future - never comes off good to say this to another adult.

quote:Every year, Congress must pass bills that appropriate money for all discretionary government spending. Generally, one bill is passed for each sub-committee of Appropriations, one bill for Defense, one for Homeland Security, etc.

However, when Congress can't produce separate bills before the beginning of the fiscal year on October 1, it will roll all the separate appropriations bills into one omnibus spending bill. These bills can easily reach 2,000 pages.

So, of course many democrats voted for it. It was over 2,000 pages long and contained spending on every possible government activity, not just embassy security. However, since Republicans controlled congress and all the sub-committee chairs, they must claim ultimate responsibility for what's in the bill. That's just how congress works. You want control of the House? You take the credit and the blame. Big boy rules.

But the problem is Biden raised this as a "gotcha" against Ryan in the VP debate. But as Ryan had alluded to earlier in the debate, we had more than enough security in places like Paris and not enough in the Middle East. So if Ryan and other R's and D's wanted to reduce funding for our overall suite of embassy security, they easily could have cut back in places where it was unnecessary and been more responsive to places where it was needed like Benghazi.

So let's stick to the real points here. If you feel another poster here needs a lesson on how appropriations bills work, they can google it themselves.

re: Candy Crowley Admits Romney was Right on Libya(Posted by Interception on 10/17/12 at 11:52 am to Jacuzzitub)

The broader point is that Romney didn't do his homework on the issue or his team didn't brief him on the "act of terror'.

The claim was so weak that Ambassador Rice refused to state it was terrorism on the 5 Sunday talk shows. Similar to the way Obama refused to say it was terrorism on Letterman. It was a slick move last night by Obama and defiantly a fumble by Romney. I believe there are bigger issues that got scored last night such as the landslide among independents on the economy CBS +31 and CNN +19. Consistently across the board Romney decisively won on Jobs, Taxes, Healthcare and Deficit. Obama can have the win if that's what voters took away on the economy.

re: Candy Crowley Admits Romney was Right on Libya(Posted by Jacuzzitub on 10/17/12 at 11:59 am to RTR America)

quote:This is the main point to make

"It has been suggested that budget cuts are responsible for a lack of security in Benghazi, and I’d like to ask Miss Lamb,” said Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R., Calif.). “You made this decision personally. Was there any budget consideration and lack of budget which lead you not to increase the number of people in the security force there?” “No, sir,” said Lamb.

We agree on this.

In reality, budgetary decisions had nothing to do with the tragedy in Benghazi. A decision was made within the State Department to keep the Benghazi security footprint small. This was a fatal mistake. The facts will emerge with time, and we'll know who approved this security posture and why. Still, this doesn't feel like a political issue to me. I can't believe that any president, republican or democrat, would knowingly leave American civil servants unprotected overseas. Maybe I'm just patriotic that way. Someone had a good reason for what they did, even if that reasoning proved faulty.

However, Romney knew he'd have to answer questions about congressional cuts to embassy security programs, fairly or unfairly. So, he decided to frame the Benghazi discussion around when and where Obama first called the attacks, "terrorism."

Was Romney seriously trying to imply that Obama is soft on terrorism? I wonder what the second in command of Al Qaida would say about that. Oh, never mind. He was just killed by a predator drone.

My point: I would've preferred an honest discussion of policy, from both men.